PITTSBURGH — Alex Ovechkin yelled while he bounded over to the boards — running as he skated, really — and then No. 8 threw himself at the glass, to the delight of almost nobody who saw his game-winning goal live, including the Penguins fans in the front row who flipped Ovechkin the bird.
Boy oh boy, what a series we have on our hands. It’s 2-1 Capitals over the two-time defending champions from Pittsburgh, and Game 3 was one for the ages.
Ovechkin’s game-winner with 1:07 to go in the third saw him hit the post and then bat his own rebound in, before a celebration that went on while more than a few fans showed themselves out of PPG Paints Arena, their yellow rally towels nowhere in sight.
“World-class goal, obviously,” as Washington’s head coach, Barry Trotz, put it, and it really was a fitting end to a heck of a game.
Tom Wilson continued to play the role of the villain, Jake Guentzel continued to play the role of the high-scorer, Zach Aston-Reese threw one of his gloves at Wilson’s face, Evgeni Malkin looked like he hadn’t missed a second of action in his return after three games on the shelf, and then just when you thought this was going to overtime, Ovechkin made sure it didn’t.
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Minutes later, the author of the Penguins’ defeat stood there in the visitor’s dressing room in his sweaty red shirt and wearing his red and grey patterned tights with a rip in the left knee, his hands on his hips.
“Obviously a huge game,” Ovechkin said, straight-faced. “Huge win.”
It was. And in this rematch of the second round from the last two years, you get the feeling the Capitals captain is extra-dialed in. He’s been spectacular, with a playoffs-leading eight goals, but that’s not all. When he talks about the series, Ovechkin is all business.
“We want to win tonight and we did,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what, it doesn’t matter who scored. We sacrifice, we play hard and we have to do the same moving forward.”
Ovechkin had come close earlier in the game, including in the opening minutes, when his tip went just wide. But when he finally struck, the Capitals had forced a turnover, and he and Nicklas Backstrom found themselves with a 2-on-1. You’ve got to like your odds, there.
“Yeah,” Trotz said, when he saw that pairing headed down the ice, “I had a good feeling.”
Backstrom hadn’t looked, but he was certain which of his teammates was coming down the right wing.
“Usually he’s flying there when he knows it’s a 2-on-1 or a breakaway,” the centreman said. “I knew it was him. He did a great job sticking with it. I think he hit the post and then hacked it in. Huge win. We’ll take it.”
Ovechkin was just relieved he didn’t raise his arms up to celebrate the initial shot, which he thought had gone in. “I finished up the play and got lucky,” he said.
Lucky? Ok, sure.
And while Ovechkin played the hero you figured he would in a Capitals win, his linemate Wilson once again fit the bill as the game’s controversy-causer. One game after the winger laid out Brian Dumoulin with a hit to the head — Dumoulin returned, and he looked great in Game 3, too — Wilson laid a monster hit on Aston-Reese.
After he got up, Aston-Reese skated to his bench and he threw a glove at Wilson’s head, before he left the game with a broken jaw and a concussion.
Once the crowd discovered there was no penalty call on the play, the boos rained down, big time. Penguins coach Mike Sullivan, who called it “a high hit,” was trying to hear the referee and he put a hand around his ear because he couldn’t hear for all the booing that came every time Wilson’s face showed up on the big screen.
The boos got extra loud when Wilson was shown on that screen, sitting on the bench and laughing, while a teammate patted him on the back.
“It’s disrespectful,” Penguins defenceman, Justin Schultz, said. “Guy’s hurt, laying on the ice. Not too good to be laughing at something like that.”
Capitals goalie Braden Holtby, who faced 22 shots in the winning effort, defended his teammate, who plays on the top line along with Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov.
“I think today for some reason it’s frowned upon to hit people in hockey,” Holtby said. “He’s a very intelligent player and intelligent guy. He creates that room
— physical play creates that room for Ovi and Kuzy. I think he’s my type of player, for sure.”
Here’s betting nobody in Pittsburgh would agree with that sentiment.
And while things were chippy before Wilson’s hit, they hit another level, post-hit. On one play, Ovechkin cross-checked Crosby, Jamie Oleksiak hammered his stick down on Wilson a few times (Wilson smiled: he really is a sensational villain), and Patric Hornqvist and Capitals defenceman Michal Kempny gave each other face-washes.
While Pittsburgh didn’t strike on the ensuing power play from that skirmish (they got one penalty, to Washington’s two), they did take a 3-2 lead soon after. Jake Guentzel, who earlier in the night scored his eighth of the playoffs, absolutely undressed Dmitry Orlov, and then sent a pass over to a wide-open Crosby, who hammered a one-timer over Holtby’s glove, sending this crowd into a tizzy.
It was Crosby’s eighth of these playoffs, tied with Guentzel and Winnipeg’s Mark Scheifele.
But only for a short time, before Matt Niskanen’s point shot went in off Matt Murray’s pad to tie things up, and then Ovechkin made that playoffs high-scoring race a four-way tie.
The Capitals captain would admit it was “a huge, huge goal,” but then he was quick to parrot a statement he’s been repeating all series long.
“It doesn’t matter what happened before,” Ovechkin said, which is a smart approach when you’re up against the team that’s burned you in the playoffs the last two years, right at this stage.
“We’re only looking forward right now.”
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